Our research focuses on two protected areas in Central Vietnam.
- Nha Trang Bay, situated along the south-central coast of Vietnam. In 2001, the first Marine Protected Area (MPA) was established here, covering approximately 160 km², with the goal of conserving and protecting the marine environment.
- Nui Chua Park was declared a Nature Reserve by the UNESCO in 2003. This site host 1066 km² of tropical forest, where 330 km² is a marine protected area.
Over time, however, those areas have also become a popular tourist destination offering activities like diving, snorkeling, buoy mooring, and boat tours. Others pressures affected their health status such as the increasing of sediments arriving from the rivers, coral bleaching events (2019), Typhoon Damrey (2017) and Crown of Thorns outbreaks (2015-2019).
The area is home to a community of residents whose primary livelihood is small-scale fishing, typically using wooden boats. Since the mid-1990s, aquaculture has rapidly expanded in the bay and now provides a significant source of income for about one-third of local households. These activities—tourism, fishing, and aquaculture—may pose stressors to the underwater ecosystem. Understanding and addressing these impacts is a key objective of our research.
However, those pressures have not been present in the same way and numer in the two aresas, creating a difference of impacts, interresting for our study.
This map shows the two areas of interest.
Purple: Nha Trang Bay MPA
Yellow: Nui Chua Park